to Valdés, the term "heritage language" can be used very broadly and can refer to minority languages which are spoken by what many know as "linguistic minorities." Typically, these heritage languages are endangered or have a high possibility of disappearing soon without intervention, and because of this, there are several communities in the United States that have chosen to work towards maintaining these languages. Heritage language vs native language The difference between native language (or First language) and heritage language is an important distinction to make. The term "native language" tends to be associated with acquisition at a very early age and carries with it the notion that a person will achieve a high amount of fluency and proficiency in this language. Typically, the native language is the dominant language for a speaker and this speaker is expected to have natural understanding of not only linguistic knowledge, but also pragmatic and cultural knowledge, as well as skills such as writing creatively, making jokes, and translating. On the other hand, the term "heritage language" is more associated with the language in which proficiency was sacrificed in order to gain proficiency in the dominant language in a particular community. This is not always the case, however, as some speakers of heritage languages have just as much proficiency in that language as in their other language(s). Heritage language learners differ from other types of language learners. Kagan & Dillon provide us with distinctions among speakers of Russian as a native language, and learners of Russian as a heritage language or a foreign language in the table below. The goal of the research was to distinguish between types of language learners of Russian and to use that information to create a new perspective for instruction. The table explains that students whose native language was Russian had acquired it as a child and used it throughout life with exposure to a full language community of speakers. For the students who learned Russian as a foreign language (L2), there was first an L1 or native language before they began learning Russian, the foreign language, which was typically learned solely outside of the community. Lastly, the heritage speakers of Russian had acquired Russian as an L1, but when they immigrated to the United States, English became their primary language. This left most heritage language students with varying levels of proficiency in their heritage language due to the